Technology and digital innovations hold the promise of new and better ways of doing business, creating efficiencies that often leave users wondering how they managed any other way. Startups that either leverage or advance these technologies are being launched daily, and while these fledgling efforts often garner the bulk of industry headlines, most fail to live up to the hype. Depending upon how one defines failure, Harvard Business School’s Shikhar Ghosh has estimated that as many as 90% to 95% of all startups ultimately fail to reach their stated expectations. The challenge, as many discover, is that commercial success requires far more than just a good idea and an initial round of funding.

This is not to say, however, that the market is not hungry for new solutions. While early stage venture will remain a hit-or-miss game for many investors, the fact that FinTech companies have raised approximately $25 billion over the past 12 months speaks to the opportunity set. As financial institutions continue to cope with fee pressure, low economic growth, historic regulatory change and the coming digital revolution, the urgency to transform their operations to accommodate this new world is only becoming more pronounced. It’s more likely than not, however, that they’ll be turning to existing relationships to solve these issues.

For instance, research firm CB Insights, through a post-mortem analysis of 101 failed startups, identified that the top three factors leading to failure often involved some combination of the wrong team, insufficient funding, or – even more fatal – the realization that no market need ever existed for the service or product offered. In a lot of ways, the factors that lead to failure among startups speak to the challenges that we’re seeking to address collectively at Eagle and alongside our parent company BNY Mellon. Our mission, “to help the world grow assets efficiently,” reflects our overriding mandate to develop technology and services – not merely for the sake or novelty of creating something new – but to meet distinct client needs and provide integrated digital-platform solutions to drive business outcomes.

The Right Team: A Track Record of Innovation

At Eagle, we’ve made the transition over the past two decades from startup to an industry leading technology solution, now serving over 160 direct clients and hundreds more through BNY Mellon and other service providers. We recognized early on that our path to success wouldn’t come through necessarily disrupting financial services, but rather working closely with leading institutions to develop and enhance an innovative solution set that delivers new efficiencies and meets the informational demands of global investment institutions. As Eagle’s business model matured, the commitment to relationships and innovation remains core to the company’s value proposition, with more than 50% of Eagle’s human resources dedicated to R&D.

BNY Mellon’s history is rooted in innovation, which has defined a culture that has supported the persistence of our business over time. Consistent with this track record, BNY Mellon, launched a next-generation digital platform, NEXEN, that opens up a comprehensive ecosystem of best-in-class solutions. It is through this platform that we anticipate clients will realize an enhanced, tech-enabled experience, that brings to life new capabilities that can be deployed seamlessly and as needed.

In helping clients better leverage data, our managed services offering from our Front-Office Services Group can effectively serve an outsourced data management function for global organizations. This team, in place for over a decade now, can bring a skillset that fully leverages an organization’s data, while allowing clients to focus on their core competencies and dedicate more resources to investment analysis, product strategy or client service.

Business-Led Solutions Matched to Client Needs

The core value proposition of both Eagle and BNY Mellon will ultimately rest on our ability to meet the distinct needs of clients wherever they reside in their growth cycle. Again, the flexibility afforded to us through BNY Mellon makes this possible as we will provide integrated, end-to-end systems and applications that can be deployed as either on-premise software, cloud solutions, managed services, component outsourcing, or as a fully outsourced solution through BNY Mellon’s multiple offerings. Clients will be able to choose the model that’s right for their business today and then scale up or down depending on the future needs of their organization.

Our ability to tailor our product set to each specific organization will only grow as clients embrace our digital capabilities. The open architecture of Eagle’s next-generation platform, for instance, will allow clients to access an à la carte menu of solutions and applications.

In today’s environment, investment organizations are simply being forced to do more with less, and given the regulatory demands and focus on minimizing risk, many believe this renewed attention on core competencies is fast becoming the new normal across the financial landscape. Through realizing synergies across BNY Mellon’s existing technology assets and developing new data-centric digital platform capabilities, we aim to help financial organizations lower their fixed expenses and streamline back- and middle-office operations; improve transparency across the investment lifecycle, gain new insights to enable the front-office and drive performance and reduce risk exposure.

It is our focus on “pragmatic” innovation that will produce new business-led applications and capabilities. The combination of having the right team, backed by the strength and stability of BNY Mellon, will allow us to collaborate on integrated, end-to-end solutions that deliver material outcomes for clients.

Watch the video below to hear more from Dan Cavanaugh on Eagle’s relationship with BNY Mellon